


The Other Side

by graceandfire



Series: Brightness Burns [6]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 01:05:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceandfire/pseuds/graceandfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy finds out that Kirk slept with his doppelganger from the Mirror Universe.  He is not happy about it.  Things happen.</p><p>*****************</p><p>Despite quick reflexes and years of hard won experience in bar room brawls—and, lately, Starfleet brawls, although Starfleet uses more respectable terms like ‘interplanetary disputes’—Jim barely sees the fist coming his way.  Sure as %#@ not fast enough to dodge it, as he’s sent sprawling backwards into an undignified heap with the impact of fist on face.  Jim stays sitting on the floor where he lands, raising a finger to gingerly probe at the tender flesh around his jaw.  Bones throws a mean punch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the 'Brightness Burns' series which takes place mostly in the Mirror Universe, this one actually takes place in the regular Universe and involves Regular Kirk and Regular McCoy. McCoy finds out that Kirk slept with MirrorMcCoy. He is not happy about it. While it might help to have the back story of reading 'Brightness Burns' it's not really necessary as this should stand on its own.

Despite quick reflexes and years of hard won experience in bar room brawls—and, lately, Starfleet brawls, although Starfleet uses more respectable terms like ‘interplanetary disputes’—Jim barely sees the fist coming his way.  Sure as hell not fast enough to dodge it, as he’s sent sprawling backwards into an undignified heap with the impact of fist on face.  Jim stays sitting on the floor where he lands, raising a finger to gingerly probe at the tender flesh around his jaw.  Bones throws a mean punch when he’s pissed.  And he’s clearly pissed.  
  
“What the _hell_?” Jim asks, looking up at his best friend with genuine confusion although he has a sinking feeling he knows what this is about.  
  
“ _You fucked him_.” Bones spits the words out at him, face flushed with anger.  “You goddamn _fucked_ him.”  
  
Yeah, that’s what this is about.  Shit.  
  
He raises a placating hand towards the furious other man.  “Bones, it’s not how you think.”  
  
“So you _didn’t_ fuck him?” Bones asks in the biting tone he usually reserves for people he _really_ thinks are morons.  
  
Jim has never lied to his best friend and he’s not about to start now.  “Yeah, I did, or at least, he fucked me, but that wasn’t really the point.”  It _hadn’t_ been the point.  But it _had_ been sex; sex with _Leonard McCoy_.  And if the remembered feeling of large, capable hands on Jim’s skin has been occupying a good percentage of his dreams ever since that first night, he doesn’t really feel the need to share that information with the Leonard McCoy standing over him.  
  
The attempted explanation is clearly not going over well and Jim wonders if Bones might actually self induce a stroke based on how red his face is going.   
  
“ _You fucked but the point of the fucking was not fucking?”_   It’s amazing how sarcastic Bones can be when he’s on a roll.  
  
“Uh, yeah.”  Shit, it was _true_.  
  
Bones shakes his head in disbelief.  “Jesus, Jim, how could you?”  There’s disappointment underlying the fury now and that’s much harder to take from the man whose opinion matters so much.  
  
He opens his mouth but is interrupted by Bones’ continued rant.   
  
“What, you’re so hard up for a fuck that you take advantage of a man who’s been through hell and back?”   
  
Hurt streaks through Jim like lightning at the accusation that he’d take advantage of _anyone_ like that, let alone Bones’ double.  He shrugs it off because, yeah, Bones has a right to be pissed about this whole fucked up situation.   
  
But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to defend himself.  
  
“That’s _not_ what happened.”  He tries again, chin lifting stubbornly.  
  
“Okay, fine.  Tell me what happened,” Bones asks, arms crossed, still pissed, but at least apparently willing to listen for the moment.

“He needed to trust me.  He needed to know that _I_ trusted him.”  And it had killed him to see that look of wariness directed at him from any Leonard McCoy.  
  
“Oh, I see.  And, per the Jim Kirk—sex is always the answer—view point, fucking automatically establishes life-long trust,” Bones bites out.   
  
Jim looks away, stung.  It’s not the first time Bones has made comments about his cheerful promiscuity but it’s the first time the comments have had any real venom behind them.   
  
Still, he’s not giving up until Bones understands.  “I let him tie me up.”  
  
This information stops Bones cold for a brief moment, but any thought that this might cool the other man’s ire is shot down as he moves from ‘furious’ to ‘furious and disbelieving.’   
  
“You did _what_?”  
  
Jim shrugs and looks up to meet incredulous hazel eyes.  “I let him tie me up.  I had to prove that I trusted him.”  
  
Wow, he hadn’t realized Bones could get more pissed.  He really should learn not to underestimate the man.  
  
“Well, God _dammit_ Jim, you _shouldn’t_ have trusted him!” Bones roars, suddenly looking twice as furious about the fact that Jim made himself helpless in the hands of the other McCoy than he’d just been for Jim supposedly taking advantage of the same man which, c’mon, _how is that_ _fair?_  
  
He watches Bones start to pace.  “He comes from a reality where their Terran Empire makes the Klingons and Romulans looks like fluffy _kittens._ And from what he was willing to tell us, _you_ were one his world’s top bastards.  Even if the other Leonard McCoy _wasn’t_ a bad man, he’s been twisted by years of abuse, some of it _at your hands_!  And you just decide to go and let him _tie you up?_   What if he had decided to take it all out on you?!”  
  
Jim wonders if pointing out that Bones’ doppelganger had essentially said the same thing when Jim had agreed to being tied up will make things better.  He doesn’t need his genius IQ to decide it really won’t.  
  
“He didn’t hurt me Bones.  He _never_ would have hurt me.”  He’s feeling stubbornly insistent at getting this point across to Bones.  This was something he’d _known._    
  
Bones is looking down at him with frustrated rage.  Also similar to the looks his counterpart had kept giving him.   
  
Hell, that was the thing that had bothered Jim the most when he’d landed in the upside down, mirror reflection of his own universe; when he’d met twisted images of the people he admired and counted as friends.   It had been looking into Leonard McCoy’s eyes and seeing _Bones_ ; battered, weary, and looking older and harder than his own but still the man who was closer than a friend, who was his chosen family.  It was why he’d literally kidnapped the other man and hadn’t _that_ been met with a shit storm when they’d gotten back.  But he couldn’t regret it.  It hadn’t been possible for him to _not_ try to save him.  
  
And it still hurts that in the end he hadn’t saved him after all.  It doesn't matter that the arguments for the other man returning to his own universe were all sound.  The other Leonard McCoy belonged in his own reality.  The man had a daughter who was alone back there.  The window of opportunity was small and had to be taken quickly.  When the other man had resolved to go back, Jim had stubbornly been against it, trying to fight his way past the arguments of everyone else around him.   
  
Spock’s argument had been logical, of course, the words unemotional but still somehow gentle as they shot Jim down.  “Captain—Jim—there is no way to infiltrate earth undetected by the Empire and track down one adolescent girl.  Our own newly established watch station indicates the alternate universe has also established a watch post to track activity at the transfer point.  The most that can be accomplished is to return the alternate McCoy to the transfer point and beam him back to his universe when the ionic atmosphere promotes it, assuming there is another vessel in that quadrant which can accept him.”   
  
Bones’ grim argument had been simpler but much more eloquent.  “Jim, if it were me, I’d go back too.  Even if I couldn’t help her I’d still go back.  It’s _Joanna_.”   
  
In the end, it had been the knowledge that if he’d forbidden McCoy to go back, if he’d overridden the other man’s decision in his need to protect him, if he’d twisted Starfleet regs. and used his captain’s broad powers for his own purposes, he would have been no better than the Kirk who McCoy was returning to.  And so, he’d watched, haunted, as the Leonard McCoy who was different but still so much the same as his own Bones disappeared back to his own twisted reality.   
  
“Jim,” his Bones is looking down at him now with the frustrated exasperation that he’s seen many, many times on his friend’s face over the years.  “You’re…” Bones pauses, temporarily out of bad temper as well as accusations because he finally growls in annoyance and puts a hand out, hauling Jim up off the floor.  “Well, for a genius, you sure are a damn dumbass.”  
  
Jim feels a grin fall into place, relieved that Bones isn’t really angry anymore.  He’ll take that as a win even if there’s still an uneasy feeling in the room of issues unresolved.   Better to leave them unresolved than to stir up more trouble.  
  
“Do you ever think about it?”  
  
Shit.  He hadn’t meant to ask the question.  It startles him as much as it does Bones.  
  
“Think about what?”  Bones looks at him warily.  
  
Fuck.  _Don’t ask, make a joke, don’t ask_ …    
  
”About us, about, uh…sex.”  Never has bringing up the topic of sex felt more awkward.  Never.  
  
He watches Bones’ face freeze to stone.  “No.”  
  
Wow, that was definite.   
  
“Really?  Not even back when…” Jim’s cut off by Bones' sudden derisive laugh.  
  
“Believe it or not kid, you’re not irresistible.  And I sure as hell wasn’t interested in being another one night fuck for the notorious James T. Kirk.  My divorce left me fucked up enough without you to add to the deal.”  The bitter words are intended to wound and Jim knows it’s meant solely to piss him off and get him to back down.   
  
And he does.  He backs off.  Because he can throw himself off a sky high platform with a barely functioning chute but he can’t risk losing this man’s friendship.  
  
“Right…forget I asked.” His smile feels weird but it must look close enough to his normal smile because Bones nods in agreement with visible relief and immediately starts retreating from the room.   
  
"Look, it’s over now.  It was a stupid thing for you to do in ways I can’t even _begin_ to count but let’s just…forget it happened.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.” He is _not_ wistful as Bones exits the room, fleeing from him with a haste that does _not_ hurt.  
  
He watches the closed door for another minute and then resists the urge to hit a wall.  Fuck.  He can’t even get drunk because he’s the captain and needs to be alert at any moment if trouble pops up.  And he can’t go out and pick a fight with one of his own crew—well, Spock would probably indulge him but Spock’s on duty right now.  And he can’t go seduce some stranger because everybody on this ship works for him and— _despite what Bones may think_ —he’s _not_ that guy, so he flings himself back on his bunk and broods.  
  
The thing that’s been eating at him in the darker hours since his trip into fucking Mirror world is not the differences between himself and his counterpart.  No, what pokes and prods and scrapes at him are the similarities.  Jim had seen himself in his Mirror twin; twisted, arrogant and hard eyed, but still resonating and recognizable as _him_.  He almost would have preferred if the other man had been a soulless monster with no humanity.  Because the similarities are enough to make him wonder in the moments before sleep; could he become that dark?  Is it in him even now?   
  
And then there’re thoughts of the other McCoy.  Of wondering how much of the battered tiredness he’d seen in the other man was due to his other self.  Thinking about it raises an ugly rage inside of him which brings him back full circle to the wary question of just how much of that other self is locked up inside of him, waiting for the right triggers to be set free.  
  
And of course there’s the fact that sleeping with the other McCoy has unleashed a craving for _his_ McCoy that’s apparently never going to be fulfilled based on Bones’ reaction to his question.   
  
Fuck.  
  
Jim is still wide awake, thinking in brooding circles when the chime sounds at his door hours later and he swings up to sit on the bed, hitting the acknowledgement button with a tired “Yeah?”  
  
“It’s me.”  
  
His breath hitches at the sound of Bones’ voice but he just offers a friendly smile when the door slides open to reveal Bones standing there, dark circles under his eyes, face tense.   
  
“Come back for another punch?” he quips.  It’s a stupid attempt at a joke and it falls flat in the silence, but his mind is too tired to do better.  
  
Bones hesitates for a long second and then sighs.  “I’ve thought about it.”  
  
Jim blinks as the statement registers.  Oh.  _Oh._  
  
The other man is glaring at him, awkward, grouchy and determined.  “Hell Jim, I thought about it but I didn’t want to fuck up our friendship.  It’s important to me.  Sometimes it felt like the only thing keeping me sane those first few crappy months at the Academy. ”  
  
Jim feels the grin nearly split his face in two as he stands up, taking a hesitant step towards Bones who’s still standing near the entrance like he might bolt.  “Bones, you know your friendship’s important to me too.  The _most_ important thing.  I would never have fucked that up. I will _never_ fuck that up.”  
  
This draws a reluctant nod.  “I know.”  Bones looks uncomfortable as he squares his shoulders.  “I didn’t mean what I said before about…uh, y’know the…”  
  
“I know.”  The simple acceptance of the half-completed apology makes Bones relax and he walks over to meet Jim halfway.  
  
“Does it make me a terrible person that part of the reason I was so pissed is because I was jealous of the other me?” Bones asks with a wry smile.  
  
“Does it make me a terrible person that I’ve been jerking off at night to the thought of you?”  
  
This draws a startled bark of laughter as Bones shakes his head ruefully.   “Jesus, kid.  No, that just makes you ‘ _you_.’  
  
They both move in at the same time.  
  
The first kiss is awkward.  The second one’s worse.  Jim’s not sure he’s ever been this nervous.  _Ever._  
  
When they’re on the bed and Jim almost gives Bones an accidental concussion the other man pulls back with a huff and growls out, “Aren’t you supposed to be good at this shit?”  Which, okay, Jim thinks with a narrowed glare at his smirking friend, that’s a damn challenge if ever he’s heard one.  
  
Five minutes later Bones is gasping underneath him as Jim grins down with cocky satisfaction. “What was that?  Was that a whimper?  D’you think I’m good at this shit now?”  
  
It’s Bones’ turn to give him a narrow eyed glare as he shifts their positions, rolling on top of a—more than willing to be under him—Jim.  “I’m surprised the Enterprise can fit that enormous ego of yours.”  
  
“Oh, I’ve got a big _everything._ The Enterprise can take me just fine.  How about you?”  Jim wiggles his eyebrows suggestively as Bones gives him a disbelieving glare.  
  
“How have you _ever_ gotten laid?” Bones asks in a wondering tone.  
  
Jim proceeds to show him _exactly_ how, managing to get the rest of their uniforms discarded in the process.  It’s skin against skin now and it’s perfect.  It’s not easy but it’s perfect.  Hard muscles, brilliant surgeons’ hands, affection, dirty words and good natured insults.  Jim’s not sure he’s ever been this turned on before.  
  
And despite his teasing words earlier he wants Bones to fuck him.  He wants Bones inside of him like he’s never wanted anything.   
  
“Fuck me?”  If the answering growl is any kind of an indication Bones is completely on board with the idea and, after a hasty search for lube, Jim finds himself on his back, knees up, Bones looking down at him with stormy hazel eyes that are dark with need and something more.   
  
“Jesus, Jim.”  Bones whispers it like a benediction when he finally sinks into Jim and it's like free falling.  And in the end, head thrown back, eyes still almost obsessively watching Bones’ taut expression, Jim’s explosive orgasm feels like coming home.  
  
Later Jim is exhausted and sated and feeling all kinds of good.  He and Bones actually seem to be cuddling which Jim sure as hell isn’t going to mention because he’s pretty sure that’ll get Bones to yell at him which, while fun, would stop the cuddling, which he’s enjoying more than he’d be willing to admit.  He’s always been a tactile person and he’s cuddling with _Bones._   The other man is a solid reassuring presence and he feels more relaxed than he has since this whole thing started.  But as weightless as his body feels his mind slowly returns to the question that’s been haunting him.  He doesn’t look at Bones when he asks it in a subdued voice.  
  
“D’you think I could ever be like him?”  
  
“What?” Bones’ voice is puzzled, drugged with tiredness and satiation.  
  
“D’you think I could ever become evil like him.  Become a tyrant like that other… _oww!"_  
  
He arches up and tries to squirm away from the sudden sharp pain in his ear as Bones’ strong hand gets it in a merciless grip and twists sharply.  Jim bats at the hand, complaining loudly as Bones forces Jim’s head around to face him.   
  
“Is that what’s been going through your thick head?”  Bones looks affronted.   
  
“Well, it could happen.  We’re the same… _owww._ ”  
  
“Listen carefully you fucking moron, because I’m not going to turn into a twelve year old girl and start giving you reassurances all the time and painting your name in hearts and glitter, but you are the best, not to mention most _stubborn_ man I’ve ever known.  You don’t have an ounce of true meanness in you and I don’t know what kind of horror that other Kirk was raised in to turn out the way he did but you could never become him.  You’re too _stubborn_ to become like him.  And I, and all of the people on this ship, follow you because we know you do your very best for us and your best is about a thousand times better than anyone else’s.”  
  
Jim feels a dizzying warmth flood through him at the growled out compliment.    
  
“Bones I... _oww._ ” He squirms as Bones twists his ear again.  “Dammit, Bones, _leggo_!”   
  
“Not until you say ‘I am a good man’,” Bones snaps out the order.  
  
“I’m a good man,” Jim mutters half heartedly then curses when his ear is twisted again.  
  
“Fuck!  God _dammit_ Bones, I _said_ …”  
  
“Say it like you God damn mean it!”  
  
“Fuck!  I’m a good man!  A _great_ man!  Everyone should thank their lucky stars they know me!  You should be jumping up and down in gratitude that I let you sleep with me, you…” Bones finally lets go and Jim reaches up, rubbing at his ear while he gazes at Bones reproachfully.  
  
“It’s good to know your ego’s back.” Bones snorts and lies back.  
  
The exchange has settled a lot of the turmoil that’s been bubbling uneasily inside of Jim since his return but there's one thing that’s still weighing on him.  
  
 “Do you think he’s okay?”  There’s no need to say who _he_ is.  
  
There’s a long pause.  “He survived there for thirty-five years before you met him Jim.”   
  
Jim looks over.  “That’s not an answer Bones.”  
  
Bones looks back and Jim sees his own concern reflected back at him.  “I know.”  



End file.
